Free The Motel Life by Willy Vlautin

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    Earl ordered me a Coke and himself a Long Island Ice Tea.
    ‘I’m sorry as hell about your mother,’ he said while we were looking at the menu. He was smoking a cigarette, and you could almost see the lenses on his glasses change in the dimly lit room. ‘When I lost my wife, I about lost my fucking mind, and, shit, you’re only, what, sixteen?’
    ‘I just turned fifteen,’ I said.
    ‘I hired you when you were fourteen?’
    ‘Yeah,’ I said.
    He laughed and shook his head.
    ‘Did I ask you your age?’
    ‘No,’ I said.
    ‘Did you tell me you were sixteen?’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘I was too nervous to mention age at all.’
    ‘What the hell was I thinking?’ he said and shook his head again. ‘Anyway, that’s beside the point. How’s your living situation, is it okay? I want you to be honest, son.’
    ‘My brother and me are living at our old house.’
    ‘You rent or own?’
    ‘Rent,’ I said.
    ‘That’s a setback. Your brother, he’s what, eighteen?’
    ‘Seventeen,’ I said.
    ‘You got no other family?’
    ‘Not really, I don’t think so. We had a grandfather but he turned out to be a real son of a bitch,’ I said.
    ‘You got any money?’
    ‘My mom’s retirement fund. We have that and we both work. It’s enough, I think.’
    ‘What you guys eat?’
    ‘Frozen dinners, we eat at Jim Boys a lot. Burger King, places like that.’
    ‘You got to eat better than that. At least hit the buffets. Get a salad, some fruit and vegetables once in a while. Get some vitamins.’ He stopped, took a drink, then went into his billfold and took from it a twenty-dollar bill. ‘This here’s for a big bottle of vitamins. Get some sorta multi, make your brother take them too. If I find you pissed the twenty away on anything else, I’ll castrate you. Understand?’
    ‘Understand,’ I said and took the money. I folded it and put it in my pants pocket.
    ‘What do you two do at night?’
    ‘Watch TV mostly.’
    ‘What kind?’
    ‘Sitcoms, I guess. Whatever’s on.’
    ‘You got to quit that,’ he said. ‘TV’s for fucking morons.’
    ‘I know,’ I said.
    ‘I’m serious.’
    ‘I’ll try to lay off some.’
    ‘Good,’ Earl said. ‘How’s school? You still playing baseball?’
    ‘Yeah, I’m playing all right. I’m starting on second. They moved me up to varsity. Jerry Lee, my brother, just dropped out. Sometimes I think I might too. Doesn’t seem like there’s much there except sports, and I really don’t like them that much anymore.’
    ‘Don’t drop out,’ Earl said and took a long drink off the Long Island, nearly finishing it. ‘You won’t miss anything if you don’t quit. All you’ll do is wash more cars or get some other stupid fucking job. You’ll never see any girls around, none your age, and they won’t touch you ’cause you’re not in school and you have no money. Girls love baseball players. You keep playing and you’ll be set. What’s your brother do?’
    ‘Works for Connelly Concrete.’
    ‘See what I mean. That’s gotta be a horrible fucking job.’
    ‘I know,’ I said.
    ‘His back will be gone by the time he’s forty.’
    I nodded my head.
    ‘It’s convict labor, son. You two ain’t convicts, so don’t start acting like it,’ he said and took the napkin off the table and wiped his brow. ‘Your brother still drawing?’
    ‘That’s all he does. Sketches things, makes comics, things like that.’
    ‘I liked that naked girl he drew standing in front of the lot. I had it framed and keep it at the house. How’d he get into that?’
    ‘I don’t know exactly. He started it more when our mom got sick. He’d just sit in front of the TV and draw. I think he’s taken some classes.’
    ‘Tell him he’ll get laid a lot more if he stays in school and hangs out with art girls. God knows there’s a lot of them beating around. See if that changes his mind at all.’
    ‘I will.’
    ‘What were you thinking out there? I mean, when you were just